All three targets would fit into the field of view at native focal length (2,438mm) with an APS-c sized sensor. M1 is much smaller than the other two and would only occupy a small portion of such a sensor.

I'm trying to figure out what to make of them. The soft focus and out of round stars seem peculiar, especially in 1 and 3. Is this typical for the ACF? I'm guessing this was with a 10" ACF- is that right? I had thought it was just a coma effect at first, but stars at the center are elongated. There is also som CA visible on blue-white stars, so it would appear there are more optics of some sort in the imaging train. Are you sure no reducer was used?

They are pretty for sure. There's just something odd seeming about them and I'm trying to figure out why.

I'd say they are very good images, sure others have managed better, but that doesnt say these are bad. Looking at how difficult it is for me to obtain good images as 2000 mm, a 12" scope sounds like a bigger challenge.

Remember too, he has only had this setup for a short time, a few months. And, we do not know how much time he has dedicated it to this beta. Give him time to perfect his process. I plan to when I get my 14" LX800 back from recall.

I find these images darn good especially at 2400mm focal length assuming it was taken with 12" F/8. It's always difficult to get round stars under bad seeing conditions for ANY mount especially with long focal length. His images are better than mine with my A-P Mach1. My sky is usually less than ideal and I rarely get round stars under bad seeing conditions. But I can get round stars when seeing is excellent but that's rare.

Those shots at Links 1 thru 4 look really good to me, and the stars look acceptably "round".

I'm not highly motivated to post images here.

The standard being applied to these images is NOT what you could expect if you posted your own images. These are being judged harshly because the LX800 on initial release failed rather dramatically to live up to expectations.

Jason is one of Meade's "goto" testers for new equipment--has been for a very long time--so anything short of perfection is not going to be smiled upon. There are a fair number of people who either bought or were thinking of buying LX800's with the expectation of an integrated, simple, well matched astrophotography platform. Personally, I don't think that is possible at these focal lengths--especially "simple".

As far as the quality of the images themselves... Frankly, it is very hard to know how the system is doing without looking at raw data. Are stars bloated because of poor seeing? Por optical quality? Focus shift? Bad focus? Poor tracking? Poor registration? Or just from ordinary processing and stretching? think these images look pretty decent for an experienced astrophotographer working the kinks out on a long focal length setup. I say working the kinks out primarily because there appear to be some minor tracking errors on the Helix.

To really know how the system is performing--to be able to judge I without bringing in our own preferences in processing techniques--we would need FWHM numbers for the guided sub frames and some comparison shots from very short exposures (a few seconds) so we could appropriately account for seeing conditions. I'm not expecting Jason to provide that--not his job.

I am interested in conveying autoguiding performance with novel systems, and I use a combination of 1) a processed final image 2) stated measurements of fwhm (") in sub exposures, and 3) raw, linearly stretched views of sub-exposures. An example for the Crab nebula can be found here.

People sometimes compare results to Hubble images, but the Helix nebula is unusual because it is huge and somewhat unique as a "Hubble" result because it is a giant montage and includes data from ground images. A description of the source images can be found here. Note that the ability to spend so much time on a huge montage was partly motivated by the need to point the 'scope away from the incoming Leonid storm of Nov. 2002.

A more representative view of the true resolution capability of the HST can be found in this image. You would need to find and magnify a very tiny piece of the lx800 image and do a side-by-side comparison at the same scale to judge the difference.

The LX 800 is specified as 1 arcsecond tracking. At that level, there should be no tracking errors.

Jason has been using SCTs for a while, so I wouldn't anticipate newbie results like focusing errors.

On the bloat on the stars, it has been my impression the entire point of ACF was to avoid that. The stars should be tight pinpoints, shouldn't they?

Now, it would be possible to make tracking errors less visible by purposely processing the stars to bloat them out some. But that would seem to defeat the purpose of even testing the mount.

As for the ad hominem attacks in responses up to now, that's really cheap. The mount and telescope are not only sold as a complete high end imaging system, they've been advertised as that for over a year, and are priced as such. Exactly what should their results be compared with, if not that standard? Software Bisque claims performance only almost as good as the LX 800 and the images from their mounts have tight stars and no bloat.